A story that no one seems to be talking about
wired.co.uk/article/catfishing…
"Rather than moderating content, Liam was asked to adopt fake online personas—known as “virtuals”—in order to chat to customers, most of them men looking for relationships or casual sex. Using detailed profiles of customers and well-crafted virtuals, Liam was expected to lure people into paying, message by message, for conversations with fictional characters"
The dark secret of online dating made clear
This Is Catfishing on an Industrial Scale
Hired as customer service reps, these freelancers were instead tasked with luring in the lonely and lovestruck through a network of dating and hookup sites.Laura Cole (WIRED UK)
Gidi Kroon likes this.
reshared this
Gidi Kroon and FediThing has moved! reshared this.
me: ok, so what's the colour code of the paint I should use?
website: we do not give out our colour codes since they are a trade secret.
like this
Corn Woman 🌽, Luke and ⛧Satanist⛧ like this.
feld reshared this.
Happy birthday to Miranda Cosgrove!
Here's one of the pics she posted on her Instagram, I'm leaving the photos of the birthday cake, her mom (because of mother's day) and of baby Miranda for you to find over there.
#MirandaCosgrove
Steven likes this.
#MirandaCosgrove #iCarly #MiaSerafino
instagram.com/reel/CsG9f-ErBJp…
Steven likes this.
Fucking Christ the @protocol is the most obtuse crock of shit I've ever looked at. It is complex solely for the sake of being complex and still suffers from *all* of the same problems as Mastodon.
Your server goes down? Sorry, all of your followers are lost. Account portability is no better than Mastodon. 'DIDs' serve literally no purpose. And none of the API code that Bluesky uses in their own app validates ANY of the crypto they're doing on the server. NONE OF IT.
Gidi Kroon likes this.
reshared this
feld, Sean Tilley and Beko Pharm (deprecated) reshared this.
The actual protocol itself is poorly confused and incredibly awfully designed. Because of the useless bullshit crypto they're putting into it, it requires you to write a server that's strongly consistent with other servers. THAT IS EXTRAORDINARILY HARD TO DO!! And BLUESKY'S OWN SERVERS DON'T HANDLE THE EDGE CASES!!!
It uses pull-based federation instead of push-based like Mastodon. You have to write a separate 'indexer' that has your 'feed' on it. That requires a LOT more resources.
And because things must be strongly consistent, AND because any user can REWRITE THEIR OWN FUCKING HISTORY AT ANY TIME, you have to, as an indexer, account for lots of different edge cases where your recorded history diverges.
The protocol for federation is built to make federation as difficult and painful as possible. It is built so that Bluesky, the private company that makes the protocol, is the only 'indexer', the only one with a whole view of the network.
WHY DOES A FEDERATION PROTOCOL NEED USER AUTH API METHODS IN IT???? WHY DOES A FEDERATION PROTOCOL NEED A CONCEPT OF 'INVITE CODES'??????
Oh wait, BECAUSE IT ISN'T A FEDERATION PROTOCOL!!! It's literally JUST the API for Bluesky. That's it.
It's quite literally impossible to use this in more flexible environments. You just can't. You cannot build anything on this because it is so poorly designed and isn't generic enough.
And I went into this with an open mind. I was like "I'll just make a simple alternative to the BlueSky server in Elixir". But it CAN'T be a simple implementation like ActivityPub can be, because it is extraordinarily complex and requires you to make guarantees about your storage and how your application works.
It turns out using Git, which is almost always used with a centralized 'remote', to do federation, which needs to be weakly consistent, IS A BAD IDEA!!!!!
What this comes back to is... who cares about any of the crypto bullshit? Having a private key and signing everything with it proves nothing because that private key must have a reputation.
You can verify a domain on Mastodon. You can point a domain to a Mastodon server. You can do that with Pleroma. You can make your own alternative to Mastodon that works exactly like how Bluesky works with domains, but it would take a 4th of the time because ActivityPub is simple to implement!!!!
The ONE thing that this protocol brings to the table is the idea of strong consistency in federation. The only issue is, it makes that strong consistency so resource intensive and so hard to implement that it decreases community servers' ability and ease of federation!!!!
And also, NOBODY CARES ABOUT STRONG CONSISTENCY IN SOCIAL NETWORKS!!! Social networks are built on the idea that we all have a different view of things. We care about seeing stuff from our friends, not seeing EVERYTHING.
Michael Downey 🧢 reshared this.
The 'account portability' piece is bullshit! The way 'account portability' works is by having two separate keys, one for signing and one as a 'recovery' key. You're supposed to be able to use the 'recovery' key to rewrite history if your account gets hacked or some shit.
WE HAVE THE ABILITY TO DO THAT AS SERVER ADMINS!!! MASTODON HAS THIS ALREADY!!
Additionally, if a Bluesky server goes down, their way of keeping access to your data is by STORING ALL OF IT ON YOUR DEVICE!!!!
Griff Ferrell likes this.
Additionally, the domain name is NOT your identifier. If you have a custom domain, that is NOT your identifier. Instead you have a 'DID:PLC', which is a kind of 'DID' (invented by, not a surprise, CRYPTO PEOPLE).
There is NOTHING FUNDAMENTALLY USEFUL ABOUT THIS IN FEDERATION. Because this DID is never made visible to a user, it is not human readable (it's a hash), and it doesn't do anything!!!
Sean Tilley reshared this.
And if you're wondering why this senseless overcomplication wreaks of the same crypto overcomplication, it's because THE CEO IS A CRYPTO PERSON!!!!
The entire protocol is just layering on top of a lot of some useless, bullshit standards that the crypto community built.
Griff Ferrell reshared this.
No, your data is stored in a server that can be a community or an individual person. But that doesn't store your feeds, like Mastodon does. So like your feed on here exists on your server, and it's built by people sending messages to and from your server.
On Bluesky, there is a single, more 'global' feed called an indexer. That builds your feed.
Griff Ferrell likes this.
I had the opposite reaction. There is a huge potential in the long term benefit of having a large infrastructure of globally unique identifiers mapped to portable human names. This opens up the potential for strong public key verification and real authenticity to e2e communication.
DID potentially allows for better portability since you only are changing the human name, despite the problem of your archive. Yes, it is overkill for a social network, but it allows the AT protocol to be used for so much more. Imagine it combined with WhatsApp's new key transparency.
Yes, the AT protocol completely dodges the recovery problem, but so what? The recovery problem is hard and unsolved.
tech.facebook.com/engineering/…
Strengthening WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption guarantees
WhatsApp's newest cryptographic security feature automatically verifies a secured connection based on key transparency.Tech at Meta
This is correct, DID:PLC is basically DNS for DIDs. Then they layer DNS (domain names) on top of that. That is now two ways of doing effectively the same thing.
This is a pattern with the entire thing. Instead of using an OpenAPI spec, they invent XRPC (objectively useless). Instead of using JSON schemas, they invent Lexicon.
Each layer does barely anything and does not exist for a good reason. The sole function is increasing confusion and making it harder to implement.
It also looks like a hypothetical AT/ActivityPub gateway would have to construct a PDS for every AP user passing through.
All feels backwards - a very specific data store and commands to manipulate it, rather than a message passing protocol and letting implementations store that state internally however you like.
The crypto stuff *is* overly complex because human beings just don't care that much about cryptographically verifying that you have access to a private key. Keybase tried solving that problem, it was unprofitable and failed.
The AT protocol *is not a protocol*. It is API documentation for how to get your backend server to work with the Bluesky apps. If it was a protocol for federation, it wouldn't include 'invite codes', hard-coded authentication requirements, or any of the other shit.
The whole thing reminds me a lot of that "Web5" slide deck that was making the rounds last year.
bestpitchdeck.com/tbd?ref=medi…
TBD Pitch Deck — Best Pitch Deck
The original TBD pitch deck for Web5: An extra decentralized web platform (2022). Draw inspiration 790+ pitch deck examples from winning startups to craft your perfect presentation!Best Pitch™
They like to keep repeating that they are not a blockchain and not built on a blockchain.
But, yeah, at any point in time where a design decision had to be made, they choose the option that was most closely tied to the cryptochain bros while retaining the ability to deny any *overt* blockchain connections.
DID is one of the most awful W3C specs (and if you like bad specs, look into DIDcomm). And the hero image on ipld.io/ speaks for itself.
IPLD - The data model of the content-addressable web
The data model of the content-addressable web. It allows us to treat all hash-linked data structures as subsets of a unified information space, unifying all data models that link data with hashes as instances of IPLD.IPLD
Not my field, but does it have be visible? It’s my understanding DIDs solve the problem of encrypting the ownership of data, so anything a user publishes (and most sub-pieces of it) are always linked to their unique user dID? Is there something inherently bad about that concept in your view? Couldn’t it solve a lot of different problems for a renewed and more open web?
(I have no dog in any related hunts. Just looking for clarity).
I actually really like the idea of local history for posts.
Storing lots of data on your phone can be expensive, but it's also expensive for server admins!
If everyone is responsible for storing their own toots as a backup, that gives a lot of resiliency to the network.
@SirLich
There's one unfortunate exception to this: Hashtags are commonly used in nowadays social networks, but are often used for discovery of posts from beyond your immediate social bubble (recent events, campaigns, topics, conferences, ...). An almost complete view of posts is desirable in that case but are very hard to achieve in fully federated systems.
Does the @protocol improve the situation there?
I would guess so yes, but there's no guarantee that an indexer has a global view of the entire network.
I can't think of a good way to describe what they're doing here. In ActivityPub, you react to a stream of notifications from servers, and you build your own view of what's going on through that.
With @protocol, you get a ping saying "hey there's something new!" and then you have to go and crawl the entire site and diff it and figure out what's changed.
That is extraordinarily hard and extraordinarily annoying and extraordinarily resource intensive to implement, especially because huge segments of users' history can just... stop existing at any point.
ActivityPub just sends you the events (this is a new reply! this reply was deleted!) whereas @protocol requires you to investigate the server and figure that out on your own.
Yes it can get a little more granular but that's still how it works.
With hashtags, I don't think you need things to be strongly consistent. Nobody on mastodon has a view of the whole network and we're doing fine. I see more important news on here than I do on Twitter, specifically more local news and more pro-worker news.
When you have a big global strongly consistent stream like that, it makes it very easy for lots of eyeballs to get on clickbait, which increases capitalistic and sensationalist articles.
Being on a micro instance with just 2 users, I quickly grew the desire of seeing more than the posts I already had in my timeline anyways when searching for a hashtag. Possibly just weakly consistent, but as complete as possible.
This motivated me to propose a DHT-based architecture for that. And you're correct, that's horribly complex. I never managed to implement it so far. :/
to be fair, that's simply a function of a decentralized system.
You *could* build a centralized indexer for AP that follows the local streams of all the AP servers out there, and then you could ask that centralized server for the firehose.
But then you're dependent on that centralized server.
About the best hybrid you could ask for is a cooperative event bus between servers that have chosen to federate. And it's almost what you get with your global event stream.
this is an interesting observation that clarifies in my mind why AT seems to "smell funny" to me.
"Strong consistency" isn't a feature, it's a flaw.
Not only does nobody actually care to "have all the datas", not only is it very inefficient, it severely compromises moderation and runs counter to building healthy vibrant online communities.
Partial consistency that is controlled by people is essential to safe and sustainable decentralized social networking.
There is one thing Bluesky does correctly which Mastodon does not. Once you verify your domain, it becomes your human-readable handle. Turns out that this matters to people.
On Mastodon (specifically - I can't speak of all of fedi) even the verified domain isn't searchable - never mind it being part of your account handle. This plus erratic presentation makes it next to useless in practice.
Protocols are usually simple(r) to implement, and they usually layer on top of each other for a good reason.
The @protocol is none of that. It is difficult to implement for unjustifiable reasons and solves problems nobody has.
A key aspect of it (that whole "you can choose your own algorithm!" thing), is so difficult and resource intensive to implement that few people will operate those 'algorithms'. BlueSky will be the biggest one of those, and that is by design.
Griff Ferrell likes this.
I think the fundamental reason why we keep seeing more and more bullshit protocols and projects pop up like this is one fundamental mindset: a refusal to attribute the problems of the modern internet solely to capitalism.
The fact is that our protocols we have today generally work pretty great. The choice of protocols hasn't made the internet what it is today. It's the fact that unrestrained, late-stage neoliberal capitalism is reaching its logical conclusion: corporate control of commons.
There's a fundamental lack of trust in people with these protocols. That's exactly it.
Crypto assumes that everyone is an attacker and that nobody can be trusted, and so we need 'proof' of your actions.
Bluesky assumes the same, that you should have to prove that each social media post is yours cryptographically.
And the fact is just that that's not necessary. Mastodon's system works while requiring trust, and it scales remarkably well in an anticapitalist way.
Obviously mastodon isn't perfect, I don't think it is. There's definitely a general 'NIMBY' vibe here of "this is how things are and we refuse to change", and we have work to do to fix that.
But I think what's key is to keep an anticapitalist mindset. We can make things easier for users without allowing in what makes social media so fucking awful: capitalism.
The tone policing, the "we were here first," and just the general snark I've experienced are the reasons I don't hang out here.
I have an account on an Australian server but I live in Chicago like you. Why did I do this? Cuz of the messaging that I can join any server I want and make friends. Well I want to learn more about Australia. One of the first posts directed my way was "you don't actually belong here." Great!
Be very careful before attributing the evils of social media to capitalism.
There's no doubt that commercial interests do not help, data mining and skewing of the algorithm for the benefit of paying companies or specific agendas worsens things.
However, a substantial part of the ills of many communities needs to be laid squarely at self centred humans.
There was absolutely nothing stopping people carrying on using Livejournal or other longer form less self centred platforms. That's not what the community as a whole wanted, however, they willingly embraced the new model and many people still want a popularity driven algorithmic timeline on Mastodon.
@davidgerard
I don't think that actually is the case. Its a fundamental misapplication of mistrust. The cryptocurrency world plays "hide the trust" not "eliminate the trust" all the time. And you can build systems where the bulk of things are untrusted but are fine to the user.
EG, your iPhone's cryptographic module doesn't even trust the base phone OS, which is why ApplePay is so great for payments as the security is very very top notch.
In that light, I'll interpret it like this:
We know we can't change capitalism. Doing that would require changing the hearts and minds of more than 50% of people in our countries, and capital is damned good at beating us in that game.
Protocols are just the only way we can think of to try to carve out some control.
Like, I'll follow if you're talking tech concerns but the moment you start attempting to link it to economic/political ideology you've lost the thread.
Also I don't care if I'm spreading FUD or if I'm wrong on some of this stuff. I spent an insane amount of time reading the docs and looking at implementation code, moreso than most other people.
If I'm getting anything wrong, it's the fault of the Bluesky authors for not having an understandable protocol and for not bothering to document it correctly.
the wild thing is that ActivityPub doesn't even have a solid test server that you can run against - we all just wave our hands and fix interop bugs and just call it a day.
But there's no huge VC dollars behind it.
Thanks for reading! The entire point is that those reasons are circularly justified and are not valid.
The sole thing you need to know is that instead of just doing an OpenAPI spec, which is the standard for documenting HTTP APIs, they invented their own that has no language support and can be expressed as a subset of OpenAPI + JSON Schema!
I think the thing to take out of all of this is that, objectively, the functionality the Bluesky authors wanted could've been built on ActivityPub. And that would've allowed it to interact with Mastodon and the rest of the Fediverse.
But they specifically built this in a way so that it doesn't do that. Meaning that I can't follow my friends on Bluesky, and they can't follow me. There is no good reason for them to have done that.
The reason this matters is that it poses a very real threat to the existence of a Fediverse. The Fediverse allows you to follow and communicate with people *across social networks*. And this protocol completely removes the ability to do that.
If this gains popularity, it has the potential to become the norm, and that would not be a good thing. Because that interoperability aspect would be lost.
Ouch. I saw a post from the middle of this thread, opened the thread to read, and .... yikes. 😱 Sounds like a pretty vicious indictment of BlueSky over all, at least on the coding side.
You did mention "crypto" in a few posts, and I'm wondering if that's just "encryption" or if they actually built cryptocurrency/blockchain BS into the AT Protocol? I may be a bit dense about that, but I could use a clearer sense of it. (Others probably could usefully know this too.)
I dont think this is a useful way to talk about this. Mastodon has a higher learning curve and I feel like there are definitely ways we can and should reduce it.
Criticism of Mastodon should be looked at seriously, especially when it's from black people, as this space is overwhelmingly white. That criticism may be frustrating to engage with, but I think we could be more welcoming on this.
Not competent to comment on any of this, but have seen a lot of vaporware tech schemes over the years, and do have a question.
Can you tell if Bluesky is actually utilizing the @protocol for the single instance platform they in operation? Could this all be inoperable spaghetti code and marketing puffery with a stripped down Twitter clone operating in the background? Just curious...
bluesky reeks of a techbro playground where everyone thinks engineering alone will magically solve everything that's wrong with social networks, I think that's why they're trying so hard with all the crypto crap
really appreciate the thorough writeup, thanks!
clacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛 likes this.
It's really funny that the Bluesky people can't just @ me because they don't interop with ActivityPub like the rest of the known internet
I love it here
Have you looked at the Zot protocol used by Hubzilla?
If so, does it solve some/all of the account portability issues?
Again, #BlueSky is just for #Twitter exiles that have severe #StockholmSyndrome and love #CryptoBros.
Cuz there's literally NOTHING that #bluesky does better that any other #ActivityPub software - not only but including #Mastodon - already does better, more scalable, more reliable and more efficient by a long shot.
Sam's criticism was of the atproto tech underneath Bluesky, and in that space, I think that the complaints are reasonable and legitimate.
But going as far as "There's nothing it does better than Mastodon" just isn't true. Bluesky (the app, not the protocol) does one thing exceedingly well: It looks and acts exactly like Twitter.
I don't see that continuing to be true once they add federation, but as a user, that is a huge difference.
You can say all you want that Bluesky offers nothing, but the reality is that it offers me an experience I like better because it is one I am used to. I understand how threads work; I can see reply counts; I can see like and retweet counts; I can post quote tweets; when I click on a post, the replies to that post are displayed without clicking again.
Because Bluesky is a single instance, the experience is much better for me than Mastodon.
there’s a more polite way speak your mind to encourage two-way discourse, but this is a valuable critique nonetheless 🙏
I hope to see more protocol analysis along these lines.
Here’s the response from one of the ATproto devs: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3…
can't say I understand much of this, but I will say this, as a user, Bluesky is fun and easy to use.
Mastodon on the other hand. Making people copy and paste URLs to follow other users is just really bad design. Mastodon feels fragmented. It may serve a niche but it's never going to take over from Twitter. But I think Bluesky will, the AT Protocol that is.
I literally criticize Mastodon further up in the thread. I would very likely not use Mastodon if I weren't already running a server. The critique here is interoperability and the lack of an actual protocol (this is literally just a set of API methods).
Copy / pasting URLs to follow is a fixable design decision, I don't agree with it, but there's nothing inherent about ActivityPub that requires it.
Also, there are people other than "white" and "black" too. Criticism of brown people matters more too? What about Asians?
I'm asking cuz I wanna know how important or irrelevant my criticism is with your logic.
This thread is a good counter to the "normal people don't care about protocols" takes
They sure will if no one builds for it because it's a PITA
I mean maybe, maybe not. If we’re talking about the protocol and building a community server, it absolutely is a big fucking pain in the ass and I don’t think many will bother. But I don’t even think people realize Bluesky is federated and will care.
I don’t think a lot of developers will want to work with the API either because it’s also a pain in the ass to work with. Because there’s no code generation for any language except TS.
1.) DIDs were not invented by crypto people and do not require blockchains at all. DIDs are a translation layer and data model for decentralized PKI systems (including, say, PGP, git, radicle, etc), that's it. They facilitate interop between key-based identity systems, everything else is means not ends. FWIW I'm one of those DID people.
the wost part is that nobody that's flocking to bluesky is paying any attention to this or worse, just straight up doesn't care.
Also, it always seems that anyone who gets into crypto develops a complexity addiction that makes video game villains seem straightforward in their plotting. So, of course, bluesky was always going to have that problem of being needless complex behind the scenes. Plus, the slowdowns from resource hogging activity are likely going to be its downfall.
At least Eloise was mentioned, that is something.
So far I think the character of young Queen Charlotte is very interesting, but I dislike that she doesn't match at all, writing-wise, with the older Queen Charlotte we already knew. At least young and older Lady Danbury match very well, allowing the actresses to really sync their performances. A lot of it is Lady Danbury's story, and King George's as well.
i have a question! so i'm making a poll. 😅
#Poll #Question #Thinking #Thoughts #Aphantasia #Text #Music #Art #Feelings #Words #Hyperphantasia #ADHD #Autistic #AuDHD #Writing #NeuroDiversity
when you think in your head, how does that work? do you think in:
- pictures/videos (55%, 48 votes)
- words/text (56%, 49 votes)
- music/sounds (36%, 32 votes)
- feelings/memories (50%, 44 votes)
Gidi Kroon reshared this.
Skipping adverts as a subscribed user on Amazon Prime Video takes about as long as watching them, but I still skip them out of principle.
Ok, so you can skip them and they are at the moment only adverts for their own programs, but I think as a paying subscriber to their streaming service I should only get the stream I'm clicking the start button on.
A: I used to always postpone things I had to do until the following day...
B: Sounds very familiar. Usually it's a mistake.
A: These days, I postpone things until the next year. It's much less stressful!
Gidi Kroon likes this.
reshared this
Gidi Kroon reshared this.
So this site documenting the AT protocol has a frequently asked questions section, but no way to ask questions. I'm suspicious.
That FAQ explains why they couldn't just use ActivityPub, by listing a couple of things missing in it. These things happen to be the exact things the Zot protocol does have, while Zot has existing implementations that do interoperate with ActivityPub. They couldn't have looked long.
#AT #ATProtocol
#ChloëGraceMoretz #Greta
New The Pocket Report:
The issue isn't that a Supreme Court justice has friends. It's that a Supreme Court justice has sugar daddies.
#ThePocketReport
vm.tiktok.com/ZGJuJJKBs/
The Pocket Report on TikTok
Episode 179 | Clarence Thomas’ Billionaire Situationship #politics #scotusTikTok
arthur.pizza likes this.
exit(), which later got incorporated into a web application because it was so useful and which took me an embarrassing amount of time to debug why the server always 'crashed' after clicking my new button.
I have to keep doing this kind of thing because my tv and chromecast have a dodgy handshake.
When I switch them on, the tv and chromecast will negotiate resolution, hdr settings and colour encoding and agree upon which to use based on the best available modes. Following this agreement my tv will do one thing and the chromecast another.
Me: no
But when you wake up, the dreams are gone and the world is still real
-- Adele
Gidi Kroon reshared this.
These wave attacks are similar to World War One tactics,
It's horrible that these things are happening again.
(This is regarding the Russian war in Ukraine)
From this BBC News article, but it's not its main point:
BBC News - Ukraine war: Bakhmut defender remembered by comrades
bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-65…
Rewatching the Amy-Leigh Hickman episodes of You season four, which if I remember correctly means that I can skip some of part one, but that in part two it really kicks off.
Episode 4x01 has a nice scene introducing Nadia. Episode 4x02 has several scenes including her doing the explaining thing. Yes, Nadia is very much like Ellie with regard to her place in the story.
#AmyLeighHickman #YouNetflix #You
#AmyLeighHickman #YouNetflix #You
Episodes 4x09 and 10 are where the Nadia situation gets really intense. If you want a quick rewatch of Amy-Leigh Hickman in You, episodes 8 to 10 of season four are it, the same as for a quick rewatch of Jenna Ortega in You season two, you'd also do episodes 8 to 10. Though I would recommend the whole part 2 (episodes 6 to 10) here.
It's clear to me (or my imagination) that this Nadia storyline in part 2 was intended as an Ellie storyline until Jenna Ortega was not available, stuck in Romania doing Wednesday. Amy-Leigh Hickman is the only actress I'd trust to take over such a big thing and she does so amazingly.
#AmyLeighHickman #YouNetflix #You #JennaOrtega
What's the best* online community—I include things like work Slacks, project-specific communities, and communities formed on platforms or in the cracks between platforms—that you've ever been a part of? Don't overthink it, what's the thing that comes instantly to mind?
* Most fun, least terrible, most generative, whatever.
Disclosure: I'll never quote you without asking, but I *am* in research mode for a thing that will be public someday, in case that matters.
Boosts super-welcome. 💫
reshared this
Gidi Kroon reshared this.
Denny Kozlov likes this.
I've always found that the communities with some sort of modest barrier to account creation have been the most healthy.
I don't like gatekeeping or garbage like that, but it helps when there's something in place that limits how easy it is for someone to just create a new account.
I think people are more likely to put thought behind their actions when they know their account is probably the only one they're going to get.
One example of this would be the Pure Pwnage forums. There was a normal, public forum which was full of the exactly the type of bad behaviour you'd expect, but people who paid to get custom dogtags (a piece of merch) could access an exclusive part of the forums for "Gamer Army" members.
The concept was sort of silly and was really just a way to support the creators of the show, but it resulted in a much, much more welcoming and friendly community.
Of note, the number of people who were openly female was far higher inside the GA forums—I'm sure that plenty of users of the general forum were as well, but gamer culture back then was even worse than it is today—and the same ended up being true for folks who were gay, trans, etc.
This GA group also had a smaller number of active members. While the total number was something like 2000-2500, I think the active group was about 50-75 people. With that number of active users you could actual get to know everyone on a more personal level. It wasn't like the relative anonymity of the average "twitter friend".
We also hung out primarily in community run voice chat servers—this was pre-discord, so we used software like Ventrilo and TeamSpeak. Voice communication brings a whole new level of understanding which I think also made a big difference in how close we all became.
When I look at the communities that I have been in for a long time—and which seem the most healthy and mature—they all have these three traits:
* something limiting account creation
* under ~100 active users
* prevalence voice communication
That first point is one that's not easy to address. Ideally you'd have something that limits people in a way that's fair, but another community I'm still part of had a good solution: account creation is only open a few times a year.
That means that users need to be patient to join and seem to be more thoughtful about what they post. They also seem to be more likely to resolve arguments and conflicts in a constructive way, although that may also be due to the fact that the small active userbase means they're closer to the people they're arguing with.
#AmyLeighHickman #YouNetflix #You
I am interested in what general people think about IQ tests. Please boost! I'm just doing a quick sample and then I'll talk a bit about them and their history. 😀 If you know a lot about them, or if you've taken a lot of them please vote too!
#IQ #IQTest #Intelligence #SpearmansG
- IQ tests measure general intelligence (3%, 4 votes)
- IQ tests measure ability to do IQ tests (90%, 122 votes)
- People who don't like IQ tests do poorly on them (6%, 9 votes)
Gidi Kroon likes this.
reshared this
Gidi Kroon reshared this.
PJ "chinga la migra" Coffey likes this.
#SlowSpeedDIY
“Public support on the pro-Trump right for the Dobbs ruling is driven to a significant extent by white nationalist values that elevate white children's lives above children of color, and above the lives of people of color more broadly. This is an important finding… “ - Anthony DiMaggio via @Salon
salon.com/2023/04/01/on-women-…
War on women: The link between white supremacy, "men's rights" and anti-abortion politics
My research finds a strong connection between white supremacy, support for "men's rights" and anti-abortion viewsAnthony DiMaggio (Salon.com)
Gidi Kroon likes this.
reshared this
Gidi Kroon reshared this.
“But anti-abortion politics are about more than just race. They are also about a way of looking at the world that idealizes masculinity, misogyny and anti-LGBTQ+ identities, with these forms of bigotry being increasingly normalized under Trumpism and within contemporary Republican politics.” - Anthony DiMaggio via @Salon
salon.com/2023/04/01/on-women-…
War on women: The link between white supremacy, "men's rights" and anti-abortion politics
My research finds a strong connection between white supremacy, support for "men's rights" and anti-abortion viewsAnthony DiMaggio (Salon.com)
“Evidence clearly shows a link between the values of the men's rights movement, racial bigotry and anti-abortion politics. The Christian-Republican right wants to control #women and maintain white heteronormativity as the dominant socio-political hierarchy. In seeking to control 50 percent of the population and deny them the right to make their own reproductive choices, it infringes on the very foundation of #democracy.” - Anthony DiMaggio via @Salon
salon.com/2023/04/01/on-women-…
War on women: The link between white supremacy, "men's rights" and anti-abortion politics
My research finds a strong connection between white supremacy, support for "men's rights" and anti-abortion viewsAnthony DiMaggio (Salon.com)
Poll time! ❓
Which music streaming service do you prefer using?
If you chose “Other” let us know in the comments which one you use.
Pls BOOST for maximum engagement 🙏🏼
#PollOfTheDay #Polls #PollsOfMastodon #POTD #Streaming #AppleMusic #Spotify #YouTubeMusic #Music
- Apple Music (39%, 626 votes)
- Spotify (32%, 518 votes)
- YouTube Music (11%, 178 votes)
- Other (17%, 272 votes)
reshared this
Gidi Kroon, Rokosun and David Chartier reshared this.
FediThing has moved!
in reply to Ian Forrester | @cubicgarden • • •So, a lot of dating sites are actually secretly just dating simulators packed with microtransactions? 😬
This line was particularly disturbing: "She spoke to elderly users in care homes, and others under protective conservatorships who asked virtuals to wait until they were given their next allowance."
Horrible to think how they are preying on lonely people, especially vulnerable ones.
FediThing has moved!
in reply to FediThing has moved! • • •Just had a horrible thought:
Presumably these "dating" sites and apps will start using AI instead of paying people even meagre wages. That's bad enough.
What happens if putative social networks start using AI to fill them with fake people? How easy will it be to tell when we are actually engaging with human beings online? Will it become impossible, in the low-context short length world of social media?
Are people going to be put off using computers by computers pretending to be people?
Ian Forrester | @cubicgarden
in reply to FediThing has moved! • • •It's already happening sorry to say, from my inside online dating knowledge 😞
Ian Forrester | @cubicgarden
in reply to FediThing has moved! • • •@FediThing
That is terrifying and awful... Can't help but keep thinking there has to be an ethical alternative?
Which reminds me of cubicgarden.com/2022/01/19/dat…
Dating in the open like Malik and Evan?
Cubicgarden.com...FediThing has moved!
in reply to Ian Forrester | @cubicgarden • • •You'd think it would be illegal to pretend to be someone in order to entice them to spend more on a service?
I am not a lawyer but it sounds very dodgy.
"Which reminds me..."
Billboards sound an interesting approach 😁 But I guess once everyone is using billboards, they won't be as distinctive any more.
Ian Forrester | @cubicgarden
in reply to FediThing has moved! • • •@FediThing
So this is why it's the dirty secret of online dating... everyone knows it happens, heck I know a few people who have been involved
See this documentary still flagged in legal concerns
bbc.co.uk/programmes/b037wr14
Tainted Love: Secrets of the Dating Game
Panorama
You can find it on a popular video sharing site
BBC One - Panorama, Tainted Love: Secrets of the Dating Game
BBCFediThing has moved!
in reply to Ian Forrester | @cubicgarden • • •Eurghh... what a horrible situation.
I wonder how dependent society is on these apps?
Ian Forrester | @cubicgarden
in reply to FediThing has moved! • • •@FediThing Sadly online dating is the dominate way people meet in the west. On top of this is a huge up tick in loneliness, personally being exasperated by this type of thing.
The Japanese government was paying bars to run single nights because of the impact on the society,
I think that says it all right?
Another reason why I keep thinking about new types of dating like @evan talked about at Mozfest in 2017
FediThing has moved!
in reply to Ian Forrester | @cubicgarden • • •@evan
Yeah... Japan is struggling to maintain its population as it is. And Covid hasn't helped either :/
On the dating apps, apart from the manipulation, it's quite worrying if most new relationships are being tracked from the very beginning like this.
The potential for blackmail years down the line is huge, if not by the company running the service then someone who accesses its data.
Ian Forrester | @cubicgarden
in reply to FediThing has moved! • • •COVID and digital stimulation? Judging by my experience and books like sherry turkle's alone together
I hadn't even thought about the potential for long term manipulation and blackmail 😥
Wow! ☹️
@evan